68 degrees
the franklin turn around + a little extra
Decided to listen to music today because I wanted to. When I started this project, way back in January, I listened to my headphones a lot. Then I went through a phase of only listening to headphones occasionally. More often, I listened to the birds and the cars and the conversations and my breathing. I think I’m settling into a balance of headphones/no headphones. I’ve been tagging them in my posts and I have 40 for headphones, which I’m calling “playlist,” and 45 for no headphones.
For some runners, the headphones/no headphones debate is a big deal. Not for me. I like both. Sometimes I need headphones and music or a playlist to distract or motivate or disconnect me. Other times I don’t want them so I can pay attention to the Mississippi river or my breathing or what I’m thinking about.
Over the past 5+ months, I’ve written a lot about listening with and without headphones. Here are two more poems to add my growing list:
Absent
Perhaps
Listening to music
All the time leaves
You with very
Little connection to the
Is: the concrete realness of things, the
Silence and sounds,
The this of being present on the path.
Present
Not silence
Only sounds:
Heavy breathing, sweat loudly
Evaporating
Across my forehead,
Dogs barking sharply, their collars clanging,
People chattering incessantly,
Hardly stopping to listen
Or absorb the landscape.
No break,
Even the gentle breeze, with its constant
Sighs, interrupts.
Skimming through my past entries, I’ve noticed that I’m interested in opposites: headphones/no headphones, freedom/limits, attention/distraction, mundane/sacred, being undisciplined/becoming disciplined. These opposites produce tensions that I don’t want to resolve, but to balance. I don’t want to pick one, the either/or model, but explore both, the both/and model. To fit with that, here are two more poems about headphones/no headphones:
The Purple Banana
Prince might have
Liked how much
Attention I’m paying to his lyrics. Did
You know he sings the
Line, “let’s look for the purple banana”?
I didn’t, until the
Song came on my phone
The other day when I was running and I listened.
The Daily Walker
Now, after years
Of running, I am finally listening! I
Hear my breathing,
Every inspiration and expiration and
All the rhythms as my foot strikes
Down on the
Path. I
Hear the greetings from
Other runners and the walker who
Never misses his daily walk.
Every time I encounter him he
Says “good morning” to me. I never noticed until now.